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In the Vancouver Census Metropolitan area, 70.8 per cent of commuters rode in private vehicles in 2011 to get to work, while 19.7 per cent used public transit

Of the estimated 1.2 million Metro Vancouver residents who commute to and from work each day, the 2011 National Household Survey suggests about 66 per cent still get behind the wheel each morning and every night, compared with 20 per cent who take transit.

Photograph by: Les Bazso
, PNG

METRO VANCOUVER - On a good day, Paul Sparrow can make it to work in an hour.

If he’s driving, that is.

On public transit, it would take Sparrow closer to two-and-a-half hours to make the trip from his Newton home to his job in North Vancouver — and likely longer on the way home.

“Obviously it’s not even close to being efficient,” Sparrow said. “I would give up my car if it was more convenient.”

Despite a decade of big investment in public transit, most Metro Vancouver residents are clinging to their vehicles as the top commuting choice, according to Statistics Canada’s latest National Household survey, which replaces the long-form census.

Of the estimated 1.2 million Metro Vancouver residents who commute to and from work each day, the 2011 survey suggests about 66 per cent still get behind the wheel each morning and every night, compared with 20 per cent who take transit. And many, like Sparrow, are driving alone.

The reason?

“It takes half the time,” said Prof. Larry Frank of the University of B.C.’s School of Community and Regional Planning. “Right now, as it stands, we still have a ways to go to make transit travel times faster and more convenient.”

Indeed, even with relentless gridlock on most routes during rush hour, the survey suggests Metro Vancouver commuters in private vehicles can get to work in an average 26.4 minutes, compared with 40.9 minutes for public transit and 23.8 minutes by bicycle.

But it all depends on where a person lives. Residents of Maple Ridge and Port Coquitlam, for instance, endure the longest commutes, at about 35 minutes each way, while those on the North Shore and in Richmond and Vancouver can get to work within 24 to 26 minutes.

Ken Peacock, chief economist and vice-president of the Business Council of B.C., said he hasn’t crunched the numbers but noted the car is highly convenient for two-parent working families, or those working later shifts in retail.

And as the traffic patterns continue to change, from a traditional east-west line to a spider web across the region, there aren’t always the proper transit connections to get people where they want to go, such as between Maple Ridge and White Rock.

Vancouver commuters, for instance, spend on average just five minutes less on the road than those in areas like Surrey and Langley.

“There are people going in all directions in the Lower Mainland; it’s no longer the suburbs going into the downtown core,” Peacock said. “People are coming from downtown Vancouver into places like Burnaby and that makes it more difficult for the transit system to deal with.

“In a lot of instances it’s still faster even if there’s congestion and gridlock.”

Langley’s Jeannine Bornais can attest to that.

She starts her day at the crack of dawn, winding her way from Langley to Richmond — where she drops off her husband — to Vancouver. She can usually get to work or back home within an hour and a half, she said, but notes something as simple as a stalled car on the highway can trap her in traffic.

“There’s been a couple of times when we’ve been stopped in the tunnel, which is kind of a nightmare,” said Bornais, 41, who works as a creative coordinator for Bell Media. “In the morning it’s fine, but at night it’s pretty bad. Getting into Richmond, at Alderbridge and Garden City, it gets really jammed up.

“I love Langley, I just wish we didn’t have to do the commute. It’s just that three hours a day we’re spending commuting, it’s a drag.”

It’s also hard on the wallet, she said, noting that the couple has to gas up every four days and get an oil change every six weeks instead of six months. And there’s no way they can make an early dinner with friends or catch an early movie.

Sometimes it’s even hard to get in a long run or walk the dogs before dinner.

But Bornais said it’s better than the alternative: her husband once considered taking a bus to Surrey SkyTrain and then to Richmond during a snowstorm but it would have taken him three hours.

“The closest SkyTrain station is in Surrey at King George and it’s a half-hour drive in perfect traffic,” she said. “In the morning going down Fraser Highway to the Surrey station would take forever.”

Sparrow, too, said it’s not worth the headache, especially when he can be alone in his car rather than “squished” into transit.

UBC’s Frank maintains the Stats Can numbers aren’t surprising, noting they directly correlate to the investments made in various transit modes, like roads, transit and pedestrian and bicycle connections. “What it shows is you get what you pay for,” he said. “The more you provide supply, the more demand you have.”

Roads, for instance, often take about a third of the province’s transportation budget, he said, compared with about 20 per cent for transit.

And while the new South Fraser Perimeter Road was touted to boost goods movement, it also increased reliance among commuters who prefer to drive.

For commuters like Surrey’s Simon Cunningham, the driving time allows him to have a coffee, listen to music and make some work calls. “It takes me just as long to take a bus and SkyTrain as it does to drive to Metrotown,” said Cunningham, a public relations officer at Metro Vancouver. “If it was easier and a shorter time, I’d do it for sure.”

TransLink’s officials say the system has gone through one of its most extensive transit and transportation expansions in the past decade, in which it added buses, SeaBuses, the Canada Line and the Golden Ears Bridge, although public affairs didn’t know Wednesday how much money had been spent.

The Evergreen Line is the next major expansion.

Spokesman Derek Zabel noted that while transit ridership has increased by 84 per cent over the past decade — with 109 million more trips in 2012 than in 2002 — more work must be done.

Zabel said the transportation authority is in the midst of consulting the public on its long-range plan to determine where transit services need to go to meet the changing traffic patterns.

“Right now we’re not in a position where we can expand the system, but we can go into service optimization … to see where we can get more people on the transit system by offering better use of our resources,” he said.

UBC’s Frank suggests TransLink is on the right track in supporting the regional mayors’ council in pushing for road pricing measures, such as tolls on bridges and tunnels to a charge per distance travelled, to generate more money to pay for transit as well as bike and walking connections.

“We have to get into road pricing, not just on the bridges but the whole system,” he said, “and to use those funds to make improvements for non-motorized infrastructure so we can have competitive alternatives to driving.”

Of the estimated 1.2 million Metro Vancouver residents who commute to and from work each day, the 2011 National Household Survey suggests about 66 per cent still get behind the wheel each morning and every night, compared with 20 per cent who take transit.

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